Odd Weapon

[lenmccoy]

Hi Everyone,
John Wang's thread on the odd weapon brought this to mind. Back in the 70's DC had a comic book "Richard Dragon Kung Fu Fighter". It had a lot of odd and interesting but real weapons in it. I believe this is the first place I saw a kusarikama. Anyway one issue had someone using a double blades axe head on a rope and referred to it as a kung fu weapon. I did think about making one but even then I knew learning a flexible weapon usually involved accidents in the beginning. Anyway years have passed and I have taken a lot of classes and read a lot of books but I have never seen anyone seriously refer to this weapon. I figured I would throw it out to this very knowledgeable group. Can I chalk this up to a writer fantasy?
thank you
Len McCoy

[Dmitri]

It would seem that any weapon on a rope would have to be able to do damage regardless of how it lands, since that's unpredictable/uncontrollable, e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flail_(weapon)

A two-sided blade seems inefficient to me.

[Wuyizidi]

Most likely a fantasy weapon.

Let's go through the design considerations:
Attaching rope/chain to a weapon:
Pros:
1. ability to easily retrieve the weapon if thrown or lost accidentally (knocked out of hand by opponent)
2. affect opponent at distance: rope dart, flying claw, meteor hammer against mounted, armored riders
3. connection to the target: in case opponent is struck or entangled, can pull the opponent down/toward us

Con:
1. additional weight drastically reduce the speed of weapon if thrown long distance: rope dart would be way slower than regular dart (which can be lighter), takes a bigger, more powerful motion to achieve same speed
2. if entangled with opponent, they can also pull us toward them

Axe is a relatively heavy, short weapon. What do we gain by attaching rope/chain to it? It is meant to be used for power shots: powerful attacks that once launched, very difficult to alter mid-course. It's already heavy, swinging it using a chain would take more effort, requires much larger motion, and lose element of surprise. You also can't do that with a lot of friends around. On the other hand it would be useful to clear a big area around you - but it would be so slow and unwieldy, people can easily intercept it mid-swing.

Let say you throw it against some target. Axes fly end over end when thrown, what happens to the rope/chain? It would take a lot of skill to throw it without getting tangled right? What happens when it hits the target, when pulled back? It's a straight edge, not like flying claw (hook). And it's heavy, so it's going to exit the body and drop quickly to the ground right? It can't fly quickly straight back to us the way a rope dart does over long distance. So now we're looking down, dragging it toward us on the ground. That's a lot of time/attention diverted. What if the opponent is not seriously hurt and pulls on it? He's got the heavier end, so all else being equal, he has an advantage.

Double-axe means we don't have to turn the edged side around to use the axe. But we lose that quickness when using it the same way as sickle and chain. We can use the chained axe like a regular axe, but then we'd have to be extra careful about chain - it would be like taking a tasseled jian onto the battlefield...

[klonk]

Hi Everyone,
... Can I chalk this up to a writer fantasy?

Undoubtedly. There is no good way for the user to control the orientation of the ax head. It will hit on the flat half the time. The rope dart solves this problem by delivering the dart by shooting it forward. The meteor hammer solves it by being round.

[klonk]

Nope. Not going to work.